دانلود مقاله ISI انگلیسی شماره 5031
ترجمه فارسی عنوان مقاله

روانشناسی و اقتصاد رفتاری فقر

عنوان انگلیسی
The psychology and behavioural economics of poverty
کد مقاله سال انتشار تعداد صفحات مقاله انگلیسی
5031 2011 10 صفحه PDF
منبع

Publisher : Elsevier - Science Direct (الزویر - ساینس دایرکت)

Journal : Journal of Economic Psychology, Volume 32, Issue 2, March 2011, Pages 284–293

ترجمه کلمات کلیدی
- روانشناسی - فقر - اقتصاد رفتاری - کیفیت زندگی - رفاه
کلمات کلیدی انگلیسی
پیش نمایش مقاله
پیش نمایش مقاله  روانشناسی و اقتصاد رفتاری فقر

چکیده انگلیسی

The paper provides an overview and assessment of an emerging literature on the psychology and behavioural economics of poverty. We particularly highlight poverty experiences, role of neighbourhoods, poverty dynamics and transmission, child poverty and disability and personal finance. In addition we consider psychology and policy responses by looking and autonomy and empowerment, and poverty reduction programs. Our central thesis is that the detailed knowledge of individual experiences, cognitions and social factors in psychology and related social science complements the traditional economic emphasis on structural factors and policy instruments in a way that is exemplified by emerging work in behavioural economics. We conclude it is increasingly recognised that poverty reduction policies which are informed by behavioural insights may, as a result, be more effective.

مقدمه انگلیسی

An initial motivation for this paper was an interest in trying to identify areas in which psychology can contribute to the development of theories and evidence that help understand poverty and aid the design of policy. For many decades, macro-, trade and regional economics provided key frameworks for the formulation of poverty reduction policies – and indeed they still do. Typically researchers using this analysis have assumed the poor to be rational and have focussed on employment and education as the key escape routes. By contrast the emerging, behavioural approach to poverty has started to look in-depth at the cognitive, motivational and even sociological limits on action. It is more micro in focus, i.e. has a richer description of the individual, and to some extent has a different approach to rational choice. It seems to share with traditional economics, an instrumental approach to rationality – so it assumes that even the poor are means-ends oriented but weakens the assumption that they are all knowing and perfect calculators. At the same time, the evolution of international policy around poverty reduction and welfare assessment has, in recent years, been particularly influenced by the construction of the capabilities approach to welfare economics (Sen, 1985; Sen & Nussbaum, 1993). Basically, this approach expands on the traditional, essentially utilitarian framework of 20th century welfare economics by emphasising the fact that welfare is multi-dimensional, that opportunities to do things one has reason to value are of particular importance, that people are heterogenous in their conversion resources into welfare outcomes at very different rates, and that monetary assessments provide only indicators of wellbeing and may not identify as being poor those who would be so identified by other criteria. These two developments in economic analysis, behavioural economics and the capabilities approach in economics have different intellectual origins but can be highly complementary when it comes to thinking about the best ways to life people out of deprivation. Crudely put, the capabilities approach has been good at helping us broadly about what deprivation is whilst the behavioural approach is beginning to show us how effective policies can be designed, given what we know about human nature, behaviour and decision-making. This complementarity informs the design of this overview, though having said that we shall be focussing on the psychological and cognate social sciences as they relate to poverty and its analysis. Against that background, our overview and assessment of psychologically informed literature relating to deprivation is structured in two parts. Sections 2, 3, 4 and 5 seek to understand various aspects of poverty whilst Sections 6 and 7 focus more on the design and evaluation of policy interventions. Specifically, Section 2 provides an overview of psychological work on the experience of poverty and highlights the importance of neighbourhood whilst Section 3 looks at some work on poverty dynamics and transmission. Section 4 moves onto consider research on poverty and children, including families with disabled children and concludes with a discussion of some policy responses. Section 5 illustrates the growing interest in financial services with discussions of work on problem debt and the scope for compulsive behaviour to be associated with financial problems. The final two main Sections 6 and 7, deal respectively with empowerment and poverty reduction programmes, both areas in which psychology and economics have focussed on questions of policy response. Section 8 highlights briefly some key points and directions for future work.

نتیجه گیری انگلیسی

In this paper, we have tried to map the broad field of psychology and behavioural economics as it applies to the measurement, understanding and policy prescriptions for poverty analysis. Perhaps the most interesting and novel theme to emerge lately is the recognition that by incorporating behavioural insights into design, policies attacking poverty may be more effective than those that do not. In addition, and closely related, it is now accepted particularly in development economics, that experiments can be a significant source of information for policy-makers. At the same, it seems that the conception of rationality continues to evolve. The super-calculator benchmark remains useful but we do not seem to believe that progress is impossible where its stringent conditions are not met, nor do we (economists if not psychologists) necessarily think of those who fail to meet those conditions as ‘irrational’. Perhaps humanly rational might be a better term to reflect how the concept is evolving. Moreover, weakening assumptions about cognitive powers have not caused researchers or analysts to question instrumental rationality – rather the contrary. Policies seem increasingly to emphasise means-ends rationality, and its value in structuring decision-making whilst accepting that this needs to build in ideas about how people actually make decisions. Although this paper has not focussed exclusively on the experience of low income countries it is perhaps worth closing by highlighting the research being conducted by the MIT Poverty Lab which provides an exciting example of how economics and psychology can combine as academic disciplines whilst contributing to policy thinking. It would be good see more such collaborations develop.